The DVD is now officially dead!

Toshiba’s loss is rivals’ gain in video format battle
The Associated Press
With HD DVDs discontinued, the makers of Blu-ray discs and players will jostle for market dominance.
With HD DVDs discontinued, the makers of Blu-ray discs and players will jostle for market dominance.

Are you a fan of the Blue Ray disc now that the format battle is over?
Yes, now I'll start collecting my movies on Blue Ray disc
No, I was fine with the current DVD format. I'll stick to what I have.
It doesn't matter. Eventually we'll all be downloading movies anyway.
Your vote has been counted, thank you for voting.

TOKYO | Now that Toshiba Corp. has officially pulled the plug on its HD DVD format, analysts expect competition to heat up among manufacturers of Blu-ray players and recorders.

Toshiba’s HD DVD format had been losing ground to Sony Corp.’s rival Blu-ray high-definition technology, which was endorsed by more movie studios and last week won over Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Blu-ray manufacturers include Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Sharp Corp. of Japan and Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea.

In making the announcement, Toshiba’s president, Atsutoshi Nishida, said he wanted to avoid confusion among consumers.

The decision was relatively quick, coming several years after the competing technologies arrived.

In the last video format battle, between VHS, backed by Matsushita, and Sony’s Betamax in the 1980s, it took a decade before Sony stopped making Betamax products.

“We concluded that a swift decision would be best,” Nishida said.

Nishida said he realized Toshiba had been beaten when it failed to win Hollywood’s backing.

Last month’s decision by Warner Bros. Entertainment to release movie discs only in the Blu-ray format was the definitive blow, he said. Warner’s action followed similar moves by Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp.’s Twentieth Century Fox.

“If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win,” Nishada said.

Nishida tried to assure the estimated 1 million customers, including 600,000 in North America, who already bought HD DVD machines, by promising that Toshiba would continue to provide product support for the technology.

Neither Sony nor Matsushita would disclose the global sales numbers for Blu-ray machines. But the shift in Blu-ray’s favor became more decisive during the holiday shopping season.

Both HD DVD and Blu-ray deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound, which are more detailed and vivid than existing video technology. They are incompatible with each other, and neither format works on older DVD players.

Nishida said it was uncertain what would happen with the Hollywood studios that signed to produce HD DVD movies, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation.

Toshiba said shipments of HD DVD machines to retailers would stop by the end of March.